Sending an e-mail to Twitter, receiving Twitter to e-mail

I can get lazy sometimes, and if there's one thing I can guarantee it's that my email account will always be open and readily available. I can't always say the same for my Twitter account. That's because I'm lazy.

I've found a way to overcome my laziness with an e-mail to Twitter solution that allows me to tweet from the comfort of my mailbox.

TwitterMail (@TwitterMail or https://twitter.com/#!/TwitterMail)

TwitterMail allows you to send an email to a specific Twittermail email (for example, abc123@twittermail.com) which then tweets it to your associated Twitter account. Better yet, you can also receive tweets sent to your username (@twittername) via email.

The problem is privacy. For TwitterMail to work you need to share your twitter account with them. For some people, this may be a problem. For others (like me), it's not such a big deal because it's not like a rogue Twitter thief would be able to do much with my Twitter account anyway!

For a bit of piece of mind, it uses The Visitor Widget to authenticate on http://twittercounter.com/pages/twittermail without sharing your Twitter password (which allows the application to read tweets from your timeline, see who you follow, follow new people, update your profile, and post tweets for you; it will not be able to access your direct messages or see your Twitter password). You can also revoke access at any time by going to your Applications tab of your Settings page - good enough?

Additional features of TwitterMail include:

• send a message with "friends" as the subject to your twittermail address and you'll be sent back a list of the latest twenty postings from your pals.
• tweet to your heart's content and let TwitterMail automatically truncate the tweet with a "read more" link
• delay tweets for a specific date and time
• convert longer URLs to shorter versions
• Tweets sent during Twitter downtime will be automatically published once Twitter comes back online

Twittermail.com in their own words:

“When you give us your Twitter credentials we supply you with a TwitterMail email address. For instance abcdef1234@twittermail.com. If you send an email to that address it will be posted to Twitter.com. Receive your latest twitter-replies automatically by e-mail! Send an e-mail to your secret TwitterMail address. The body of the message will be published in your Twitter Profile. For a normal message, you should always leave the subject-line empty.”

Check them out over here: http://twittercounter.com/pages/twittermail.

TwitterCounter is the parent site for TwitterMail, and also offers its own range of features (including milestone notifications, weekly email updates of your Twitter account, etc.) so go and check them out!